Using the 2011 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) database, we explore the heterogeneous impacts of social networks on informal financial inclusion for urban and rural households in the PRC. We find that social networks significantly increase the probability of households' participation in...

Using terrorist attacks as an exogenous shock to safety uncertainty, we provide causal evidence that firms located near terrorism-stricken areas receive lower takeover premium. The latter finding is reflected in lower target firm abnormal returns and synergy gains. Additionally, given that firms...

Geopolitical risk (GPR) is negatively associated with both domestic and inbound cross-border acquisition activity. In support of the predictions of a real options channel, the negative effect of GPR is more pronounced when acquirers have foreign business segments or are financially constrained,...

We examine the causal effects of uncertainty on corporate innovation by exploiting terrorism events. During the five-year window after terrorist attacks, firms near the strikes experience meaningful declines in R&D spending, patenting, citations, patent originality, and innovation value. These...

We find that firms invest more to build up corporate social capital, as measured by corporate social responsibility (CSR) intensity, when facing high economic policy uncertainty (EPU). The results are robust to endogeneity concerns. The effects are more pronounced for firms in consumer-oriented...

We examine how the market values operating assets in the presence of time-varying ex ante risk that these assets may be tunneled away. We analyze pairs of Chinese publicly listed firms and their non-listed parents and examine the market valuation of current assets (cash balances, trade...

Defining systematic risk management (SRM) skill as persistently low fund systematic risk, we find evidence of time varying allocation of hedge fund management effort across the business cycle. In weak market states, skilled managers focus on minimization of systematic risk via dynamic...